Commercialising MedTech Beyond the Lab: Why Evidence Alone Doesn’t Sell

Why Clinical Evidence Alone Doesn’t Build a MedTech Business

A device with strong clinical evidence isn’t automatically a business. 

Every year, brilliant scientists and dedicated clinicians create devices that could transform patient care. Then nothing happens. The product sits on a shelf, collects dust, and the company burns cash wondering why no one’s buying. 

It’s not because the idea was bad. It’s because the commercial strategy either came too late or never came at all. 

Healthcare’s full of people who can show you stats and data. It’s got far fewer who can convince a hospital to buy something and actually adopt it at scale. 

That’s the real problem. Most founders think evidence equals impact. In reality, evidence only earns you the right to have a conversation. The rest comes down to the bits no one wants to talk about on innovation panels, market fit, procurement, pricing, training, and adoption pathways. 

If you don’t master those, your device becomes a conference trophy. 

Why Even Breakthrough Medical Devices Fail

People assume the NHS or global health systems are meritocracies.
They’re not. Life would be easier if they were. 

Hospitals don’t necessarily buy the best technology. They buy the technology that fits their workflow, budget, politics, and risk tolerance. The decision chain’s messy. You’ve got surgeons, nurses, infection control, procurement, finance, quality, IT, estates, and often a committee that meets once a month if you’re lucky. 

If your value story only speaks to clinicians, you’ll get compliments but no orders.  If you only speak to procurement, you’ll get ignored by the users.
You need both, and you need to speak their language, not your own. 

The first commercial questions decision-makers ask in the real world are simple:

• What problem does this solve today?
• Who pays for it?
• How fast do I see value?
• How disruptive is this to my staff and workflow?
• Who else has already proven it in practice?

If you can’t answer those in plain language, your product will sit on a shelf looking clever while older, less impressive solutions get used simply because they’re understood and easy to buy. 

The Biggest Commercial Myth in MedTech

Many innovators still operate with the mindset that if something improves patient care, it’ll be adopted. Sadly, that’s not how it works. 

Hospitals don’t buy clinical benefit. They buy risk reduction, pressure relief for staff, clarity on cost, reliability of supply, ease of training, and political safety. Patient benefit helps, but it doesn’t close the deal by itself. 

Hospitals don’t buy science. They buy outcomes they can feel in daily operational life.

The Four Conversations Every Product Must Survive

If you want a product to travel, you’ve got to speak four languages. 

• The clinician wants safety, speed, and confidence it won’t slow them down.
• Procurement wants predictability and a clean process.
• Finance wants a payback period that’s real and trackable.
• Distributors want margin and proof that you understand their customer. 

If your story only speaks to one group, especially clinicians, you’ll lose the other three before you even know they were in the room. 

The Biggest Commercialisation Mistake MedTech Founders Make

Too many founders start thinking about commercialisation after regulatory approval. That’s far too late. Commercial strategy needs to start on day one. 

You don’t build a commercial plan after you build the product. You build it alongside the product:

• Which market first
• At what price
• Through which partner
• Into which type of institution
• With what reimbursement logic
• With which champions 

If you start commercial planning once your product’s approved, you’re already nine to twelve months behind a competitor who built commercial readiness from day one. 

Why MedTech Companies Struggle to Scale

Let’s talk honestly about the UK for a moment. The UK’s fantastic at developing health innovation. It’s less fantastic at scaling it. 

You can have glowing clinical feedback and still spend two years in pilot purgatory. The NHS is huge, and change moves slowly. By the time your pilot finishes, your investors are restless, your runway’s shrinking, and someone in the United States or Middle East is already moving. 

That’s why many successful UK companies use the NHS to validate but commercialise globally.

Private hospitals abroad move faster. Reimbursement frameworks are clearer. Distributors are hungrier. 

The lesson’s simple. Respect the NHS. Learn from it. Don’t rely on it as your only path to growth. 

Pilots Aren’t Success

A pilot can open the door, but it rarely pays the bills. Most companies treat pilots like proof of success instead of what they really are: a market test. 

You don’t build a pipeline by stacking up pilots. You build it by using the first pilot to prove value and then using that proof to drive replication. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice: 

1. Design the pilot like a sale, not a trial.
   Price it, scope it, and deliver it as if the customer had paid full value. That way, the transition from test to purchase is natural, not awkward. 
2. Capture measurable, commercial outcomes.
   Don’t stop at clinical feedback. You need numbers that speak to CFOs: time saved per case, reduced consumables cost, fewer cancelled procedures, faster turnaround. 
3. Turn evidence into a repeatable story.
   Package the results into a clear narrative and use it to approach ten more similar sites. Don’t wait for perfection. Move while the story’s fresh. 
4. Know your next market before the first pilot finishes.
   A real pipeline means lining up the next adopters early. Build a shortlist of hospitals, regions, or distributors that match your first success and start conversations while you’re still implementing. 
5. Build momentum, not monuments.
   Pilots should create forward motion. The second one should take half the time and twice the scale. If that’s not happening, change the model or the market. 

A pilot’s only a success if it leads to the next three sales. Anything less is an expensive rehearsal.

Why MedTech Commercialisation is About Alignment

The best MedTech companies integrate clinical, regulatory, market access, and sales thinking from the start. 

Engineers and clinicians may understand workflow. Commercial teams understand clinical nuance. Leadership listens to users, distributors, procurement, and finance before building the plan. When everyone speaks value, products move.

A Simple Test for MedTech Commercial Readiness

If your pitch deck begins with the evidence and ends with your commercial model, flip it. 

Start with the problem, the buyer, the money flow, the adoption path, the economic case, and the workflow impact. Then show the evidence as proof behind the value, not the value itself.

The One Question That Determines MedTech Adoption

Instead of asking: “Do we have evidence ?”; ask this: “Can we prove value quickly, clearly, and in the language of the buyer?”. 

If the answer’s no, you don’t have a commercial model. You’ve got an idea with hope attached. Healthcare doesn’t buy hope. It buys outcomes, efficiency, time saved, cost avoided, and risk reduced. If you can’t explain your product in those terms, start again. 

Final Thought

Innovation’s the easy part. Adoption’s the hard part. Anyone can build a device. Few can turn it into a business. 

Evidence matters. Clinical proof matters. But commercial readiness decides who survives. 

If your plan relies on someone else figuring out your route to market, that’s not strategy. That’s wishful thinking. So ask yourself one more time. Do you want to innovate, or do you want to be adopted. Because they’re not the same thing, and the winners understand the difference early. 

References

• NICE. MedTech Innovation Briefings and Adoption Insights.
  (NICE publishes MedTech Innovation Briefings and guidance that highlight adoption challenges and evidence requirements across the NHS.)
• ABHI. HealthTech Innovation and Adoption Reports.
  (ABHI regularly publishes surveys and reports on MedTech adoption barriers, procurement complexity, and commercialisation challenges in the UK health system.) 
• OECD. Health Innovation and Market Access Analysis.
  (The OECD produces ongoing analyses of global health innovation, commercialisation environments, and market access dynamics.) 

Disclaimer. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Test Labs Limited. The content provided is for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal or professional advice. Test Labs assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of this article, nor for any actions taken in reliance thereon.